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What to Watch in Visa's Q3 Report

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Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) is scheduled to release its fiscal third-quarter financial results after the markets close on Wednesday. The consensus estimates call for $1.09 in earnings per share (EPS) and $5.09 billion in revenue. The same period of last year reportedly had $0.86 in EPS and $4.57 billion in revenue.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Visa and Mastercard are close to settling a long-running antitrust lawsuit with merchants over the fees they pay when they accept card payments.

Under the settlement, Visa, Mastercard and a number of banks that issue debit and credit cards, including JPMorgan, Citigroup and Bank of America, would pay the merchants around $6.5 billion. At the moment it isn’t entirely clear how the payment would be split up among the card networks and the issuing banks.

Overall, Visa has outperformed the broad markets, with its stock up about 40% in the past 52 weeks. In just 2018 alone, the stock is up only 23%.

Prior to the release, a few analysts weighed in on Visa:

  • Raymond James has an Outperform rating with a $165 price target.
  • Morgan Stanley has an Overweight rating.
  • Merrill Lynch has a Buy rating with a $155 target price.
  • Wolfe Research has an Outperform rating.
  • Oppenheimer has an Outperform rating and a $154 price target.
  • Wells Fargo has an Outperform rating with a $155 price target.

Shares of Visa were last seen at $140.87, with a consensus analyst price target of $150.71 and a 52-week range of $93.19 to $141.12.

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